Chai...Chai...Coffee...Coffee...Mirindapepsiwater...Waterwatercoldandsweet...

So it's been a while since I've gone to an Internet Cafe...

First off, I'm in Fort Kochi right now, in Kerala, the only state of India to have democratically voted to be communist. For inspiration I read the second half of Al's essay A Man, which is devoted to a second person rendition of Che's life and death. But let me backtrack a bit.

The day after exploring the markets in Old Rajender Nagar (also spelled Rajinder) we went to Connaught Place, a gargantuan three-tiered traffic circle saddled between Old and New Delhi. I could barely breathe in this choking spiral of unregulated fuel emissions, open sewers, and soul-crushing poverty. Sarina was looking for some specific items in Janpath market,
but she couldn't handle all the people rushing up to her trying to sell their crap, so she kept running away. By this point I'm saying jee naheeng (जी नहींग। I think that might be spelled wrong) with fairly good accuracy and frequency. Anyway, I got terribly sick in the throat from all the pollution there. The next day our good friend Rajesh, who runs the Crystal Palace, takes me to the Shri Ganga Ram Hospital on his bill. We also switch to a room with AC, and it takes us four or five hours to realize that the AC wasn't even on, it was that much cooler in the room.



After taking some strange concoctions the pharmacist sold me for about three bucks (there are many things in India, I've noticed, that are labeled "EXTERNAL USE ONLY." haha) we gallivanted off to Main Bazaar in Paharganj, where our originally booked hotel was located. Thank "Bob" we got scammed out of it, because that place is crawling with slack-jawed hippies looking for what they think is enlightenment (or just really cheap hippy clothes?). It was still fun, and it gave us the chance to get some more appropriate clothing for the weather. Main Bazaar is still the only place I've seen any Americans so far (non-Indian Americans that is); they were a group of five skipping youngsters from Texas with bright eyes and colorful bandannas.

Monday was spend hanging out in Old Rajinder Nagar, eating at a nice veg restaurant, getting some laundry done, and chatting with locals. Tuesday we had gotten fed up enough with the air to head out of Delhi, so we braved the New Delhi train station to book tickets to Kerala. There are so many people there to lead you astray, but we had been forewarned by Lonely Planet. That night was a teary farewell with Rajesh and Shanti, our friends from Crystal Palace. We sat in the hotel lobby for hours discussing Indian culture, religion, and politics (which necessarily includes U.S. politics, as I have learned it does anywhere now), and munching on some righteous kulfi. After Sarina got bored of my attempts to turn Rajesh into a key informant (he had already introduced me around town to all sorts of folk), she went upstairs. Immediately the hotel staff encouraged, nay, insisted with delightful glee that I get a couple of beers and get Sarina in the sack. By this point, I had already been asked to go drinking with the boys many times and had politely declined, but now there was no mercy. Was I not a man? Did I not like sex? Was she not beautiful? Even after my staunchest refusal to drink, Rajesh suggested that I still get two beers and give them both to her. In a desperate attempt to get out of the situation, I ended up buying a beer for Shanti. The next morning we were in such a rush to get to the train on time that Rajesh had no choice but to accept my failure as a man. Not a single bank would exchange my traveller's cheques, so we had to get a black market banker to do so.

On the mad dash to New Delhi Train Station via autorickshaw, I noted the time to be 11:11. Remembering that my return to the states would be at 11 AM on 11/11, I was sure that we would make the Kerala Express, but only after running and jumping on. Somehow the police just let us whiz past the checkpoint (no wonder there have been so many bombs going off in Delhi recently!), and just as we found our platform the plane began to depart. Sure enough, we found our carriage and lept aboard.

By the way, the mail express trains are not very express. Total trip time was 46 hours, in a 2-tier AC berth shared with a sleepy Christian from Kerala and an angry Muslim blaring his I-Pod and glaring at the three of us. But the trains are definately a great way to see the extremely varied Indian landscape relatively quickly. The second night a happy Hindu joined us after the Muslim left, to get drunk with the Christian and try and sell him cheap cell phones. There was a rant about how Hindus and Christians are brothers in India, but that Muslims were a headache for everyone (meaning for Westerners also); I tried to explain that I think we should all be brothers and he happily agreed. He spoke of the general Indian fear of radical Muslim bombers being trained in Pakistan and crossing the border. He also tried to get us to drink; by this point I had picked up enough Hindi to politely decline with finality, but Sarina had a much harder time. He ended up giving us a lot of good tips for Kerala and Delhi, as well as translating some tips from the Christian who only spoke Hindi and Malayalam.

Now we are on an island in Kochi, chillin' out max and relaxin' all cool. There is still plently of religious culture here for me to digest, and I'm not choking to death. But everywhere we turn are tourists! But at least we are finished with that terrible train food. There's a lot of thunder now so I want to get back to my hotel before I get drenched; I'll try to post in a few days.